This AMA occurred on the FIO Telegram (https://t.me/joinFIO) on February 13th, 2020.
Questions and answers were slightly modified for clarity/grammar+spelling.
All questions were answered by FIO’s Managing Director, Luke Stokes.
Q: What is your long-term vision for the blockchain industry? Are you concerned about other projects replacing FIO?
The long term vision, to me, is that all blockchain products and services in the space are easier to use. I think FIO is one of the few things in all of blockchain that can transcend the tribalistic boundaries as something we can all get behind and support.
As for another technology coming along and doing it better, that’s always a risk with any open source solution, but I think in a situation like this, the value is in the network effect and we already have 28 members and affiliates prior to mainnet launch — which is a great start. I’m reminded of Metcalfe's law as well… the number of nodes we add, the more value we create
Q: When is mainnet launch? What should we expect after mainnet launch?
Our plan has been Q1 and we’re still on track for that to happen in March.
As for what to expect, we have a list of key features we still want to implement after mainnet launch. We also intend to expand the Foundation for Interwallet Operability DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Consortium) so this protocol will be directed by the members of the community. We’ll be onboarding more wallets, exchanges, products and services throughout as well.
Q: How can FIO Protocol provide security to users’ data? Why is the FIO Protocol better than your main competitors?
One of the things we’re seeing in the space is a comparison to DNS. DNS is a public thing… you have to find the IP address [in plain-text], but wallet naming, we think, should be as private and peer-to-peer as possible. There’s no reason for everyone to know my crypto balances if they know my wallet name, so we want to focus on keeping that information encrypted while still having a great usable experience. And beyond just naming (which most services focus on today), we are a full value routing protocol.
That means at mainnet launch we’ll have FIO Addresses, FIO Requests, and FIO Data. In the future we intend to expand to subscriptions, multisig routing, and more.
Q: What measures will be applied to ensure that delegates are taking action in the highest interest of the community after they are elected to this position?
This is a great question, and one I’ll definitely be focusing on within the Foundation. As a block producer on Steem and EOS via eosDAC, I’m quite familiar with DPoS systems and where they work (and sometimes don’t). We will continue to learn from other EOSIO-based DPoS chains along with other governance solutions in the space to improve things as we go, but ultimately what we see in EOS (despite a lot of popular criticism) is an active chain which is quickly deploying fixes and continuing to improve.
As a consortium, we envision our block producers will be the major players in the space who will want to ensure this protocol benefits their users.
Q: What exactly can an average joe like me get out of from owning a [FIO Address] domain?
Well, I consider myself an average joe as well, and I’m really excited to own the “stokes” domain which I got during the pre-sale. I’ll be happy to share with people luke@stokes being the place to send me funds and where I can do requests from.
It will greatly simplify my experience of using cryptocurrency, and I look forward to getting other members of my family hooked up with the stokes domain. Ultimately, this protocol is about improving usability and if you use cryptocurrency at all (whether a wallet, exchange, or end user), you will benefit from having a name with value routing features that you control.
Q: What’s the difference between Dapix and FIO?
When I first met the Dapix team, I was a little confused by this as well. Dapix is a venture-funded company that built the first version of this protocol solution and that IP is now owned by the Foundation, which is a non-profit Cayman entity. The agreement between Dapix and the Foundation is that the code will be open-sourced after mainnet launch and sufficient decentralization.
Q: What is the FIO Token’s utility and how is it used on the FIO Protocol
In any blockchain system, the value of the token is important for securing the chain as it is part of the reward mechanism for the participants (especially the block producers). The FIO Token is not different. It is used as a utility to pay for fees associated with the chain such as name and domain registrations and those fees are distributed to block producers and technology providers as well as a small amount to the foundation to fund ongoing development and promotion.
Q: What are the difficulties you have been faced during the development of FIO? How many products have integrated the protocol? What are some insights gathered from the members?
EOSIO is a really advanced technology stack that is continuing to improve. The Dapix team made significant changes to it, such as removing resource staking and RAM management, etc.
By adding in bundled transactions and removing the need for people to think about accounts (among many other things), the code has been improved over the last year and half to directly meet the needs of the FIO Protocol.
We currently have 28 members and affiliates with a handful or so very far along in their integration. As you may have seen from our demo video, Edge Wallet is one such example working right now on our testnet.
Some of the insights we’ve had include how busy so many teams are and how important this protocol is needed as a revenue source for many of these projects that may not currently have one. As an owner of a TPID (technology provider ID), services and wallets can get some of the fees associated with the FIO Protocol. This ensures that those who provide a great user experience may also have more opportunities for revenue.
Q: What does the relationship between individual members, Dapix, and FIO look like when making decisions and making changes to the software?
That’s one I’m passionate about: on-chain governance. It’s also not an easy one. Dapix is a service provider for the Foundation, so they will work according to those statements of work.
The Foundation Board will, a year after mainnet, be influenced by the will of the token holders, as they will be able to signal to the existing board who they would like to be elected and the board will then pick from those options.
That’s the current plan as we have it right now, but I should stress with this and all answers here, that I’m just one perspective here - not what will eventually be a widely distributed community. So the token holders who choose to join the FIO DAC will have input on who the board is, but ultimately as with all DPoS chains, the block producers, voted in by the token holders, will determine the direction of the protocol via their acceptance of multisig code changes or hard forks.
Unlike other DPoS chains, with a foundation in place, we feel the FIO DAC is going to be well-positioned to represent the community holders and make valuable recommendations to the block producers.
Q: What are some of the biggest highlights for FIO over the last year, and what are some upcoming features?
Among the biggest highlights is Dapix getting the support of investors, including Binance Labs, leading the round of over $5m. From there, getting up to 28 FIO Members excited to integrate the protocol and the ongoing process of onboarding new block producers to our testnet and getting that up and running. That’s been really exciting for me to see as I’ve worked with many of our current testnet producers in Steem and EOS and they are some of the most technically excellent people I know in the space.
As for upcoming highlights, I’m excited to get the friend request or whitelisting functionality completely spec’d out and implemented to further increase peer-to-peer privacy, along with the ability to transfer domains. Future features like multi-sig routing for chains that support it, subscriptions, and more are also coming. Blockchains are really powerful, but many of their features are too complicated for normal people to use, so I really like how the FIO Protocol will provide a consistent usability layer for everyone on every chain.
Q: When will corporations stop being afraid of using blockchain ? And will FIO Protocol lead to mass adoption ?
Right now blockchains are super scary and public addresses only add to that confusion. By simplifying that process, I think it will greatly help mass adoption because it makes every project easier to use.
Q: What are the activities and liabilities of your project? Will employees be paid in tokens? If so, do they have a lockout period before they can sell on the open market?
I’m not quite sure what you mean about liabilities. As for employees, the Foundation doesn’t have any at the moment and that will be determined going forward by the board. Ideally, I’d prefer to have active worker proposals from the community and I do imagine some will choose to be paid in tokens to support the projects they are building. As for lockups, that’s another feature we’ll be building after mainnet launch, but there are smart contracts already in place for genesis block that will have a lockup period for many parties.
Q: How will FIO Protocol users benefit from the protocol? How easy is it to use FIO Protocol in existing infrastructure?
The FIO Protocol, from my perspective, has the potential to increase the usability and value of any blockchain-connected project because they all (from my perspective) suffer from usability concerns. If we make all projects (wallets, exchanges, in-game NFTs, payment gateways, etc) as easy to use as something like PayPal or Venmo, then we all benefit from that.
Q: How does FIO Protocol choose FIO Members? And what are the benefits of these projects from working with the FIO Protocol ?
As an open-source protocol (after mainnet launch) any company or service will have everything they need from SDKs, to APIs, to documentation to complete their integrations. FIO Members are early supporters of the project, but joining FIO isn’t required to integrate.
Q: How do you acquire FIO Tokens? What measure(s) might be in place to prevent rampant whale formation?
The FIO Token is a utility token, so our focus is on providing ways for users to obtain reasonable amounts of tokens for use on the protocol. We’re not giving out (nor will we ever) investment advice as we see the token as an important part of the ecosystem to improve the usability of all cryptocurrency projects.
Q: How did (FIO) you guys survive in this long bear market and what difficulties have you encountered?
That’s a great question! I really like how Dapix did a traditional raise of funds to support this development over the last year and a half. David Gold, the CEO, has a lot (10+ years) of tech VC experience and he ran a tight ship through the bear market in a way that is quite impressive.
Q: Are there plans to make FIO domains integrated into other marketplaces like Open Sea which is the largest marketplace for NFTs?
Glad you asked! I’ll actually be on a panel next with at NFT.NYC with other naming solutions in the space that also includes Opensea. I look forward to having that conversation with them for sure and continuing the process of spreading awareness about FIO Addresses and domains for those who want to obtain them. Related to that question and the one a few lines above that, we’ve also built an open-source address and domain registration website that I’m excited to see the community use, so that any project can provide that service to their users for their product to register FIO Addresses and domains.
Q” When will the auctioning of domains be available, as auctioning would require sending domain from one account to another?
Domains aren’t auctioned by the protocol. At mainnet launch, they will be available on a first come, first serve basis through registration sites that we will make available. We already ran an auction prior to mainnet launch.
Q: Is FIO a wallet?
When I was looking through questions earlier on Twitter and Telegram, I saw a few that referenced FIO as a wallet… I wanted to make clear that there is no “FIO Wallet”
The FIO Protocol is something wallets integrate with into their existing products and services
Q: In the past few years, many cryptoassets were prone to hacking — what can you do to assure crypto traders that FIO has strong security and privacy to prevent this?
I’d say, in the 7+ years I’ve been in the space, most of the hacks have not been with the cryptocurrency technology itself, but with centralized exchanges or with people mismanaging their keys. I think we’re providing more security by preventing man in the middle attacks and insecure key exchange that happens today with public keys through QR codes, text messages, email, etc. With FIO, that’s all encrypted peer to peer as a secure key exchange.
Q: If a competitor should arise today providing the same services. What would you do to stay and remain relevant?
There are other naming solutions today, but they seem to focus on the open, DNS model. We think wallet naming should be as private as possible which is why we’ll be implementing a more secure approach with whitelisting and friending after mainnet launch, so you only reveal public addresses to people you intend to interact with. With these types of projects, I think it all comes down to adoption. If we provide the best experience for the users and we get big players like Binance Labs and our many wallet partners that already support us, I think we have a great chance of becoming an industry standard.
Way to connect with us:
Website: https://fio.foundation
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Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/officialFIO
Discord: https://discord.gg/pHBmJCc
Telegram: https://t.me/joinFIO
